Finland and the EU to promote sustainable development
The external policies are currently being created for the European Union
based on the Lisbon agreement. There are two basic options.
The federalists have always had as their goal the development the EU into
a US-type global power. It has been justified by saying that the EU is an
economic giant, but a political dwarf. They would like to develop the EU
external policies on the basis of narrowly understood foreign and security
policies.
Their definition of the EU is not based on facts. In three sectors – in
development, trade and environmental policies – the Union is the leading
power in the world.
In my opinion, the EU should develop for itself a global strategy founded
on those three strengths. In the promotion of sustainable development the
EU would have a real contribution to make on global development.
Through my political career I have worked for sustainable development.
For the first time I became thoroughly acquainted with the problems of
humanity when I read the Club of Rome’s 1972 report ‘The Limits of
Growth’. Then I understood that the direction of development of the
mankind must be changed..
When I became Development Minister in 2007 I fundamentally changed
Finland’s development policy. The new development policy programme was
based on the promotion of sustainable development.
As Development Minister I made an initiative to create a Transatlantic
Partnership for Sustainable Development between the EU and the USA. The
goal was to enhance effective poverty reduction and to promote sustainable
development. This initiative brought results. It is one of the few
positive steps in the transatlantic relations in recent years.
When the Club of Rome report was published, there were 3.5 billion people
in the world. The figure is now at the level of seven billion and during
the next few decades the population is forecast to reach or even exceed
ten billion.
Providing food for the growing population is a huge challenge for the
mankind. Global food production has to double over the next decades.
But simply increasing food production is not enough. Humanity is drifting
towards impasse as the growing population strives for ever better material
standard of living or, in other words, towards consuming more and more
from year to year. The world’s natural resources are not sufficient to
support this, nor is this ecologically sustainable.
Our economy must be adapted to our ecological limits. We have to develop
environmentally friendly technologies. We have base our economy primarily
on the renewable natural resources. We have to save all raw materials and
to recycle them. The natural environment has to be protected.
But this not enough. The values of life and politics must be changed. All
over the world people have to learn to emphasize our immaterial spiritual,
religious and social needs over the dominance of materialism. People have
to learn to find satisfaction from other sources than growing consumption.
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